BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 383 



by placing in it yqung fry, but grown fish. Smelts were placed in a 

 lake, where these fish had heretofore not been found; they flourished 

 and increased wonderfully, but since that time the number of bleaks and 

 other fish has been diminished, the yield of the fisheries has not been 

 increased by a single pound, and no progress has been made ; a certain 

 proof, says the professor, of the great truth which for so long a time 

 we have preached in vain, that a body of water cannot produce any 

 more fish than the quantity of suitable food contained in it entitles it 

 to. The superintendent of the Nikolsk establishment confessed to Pro- 

 fessor Malmgren that a few hundred trout and Coregonus in the ponds 

 of the establishment were the only visible result of its 25 years' exist- 

 ence; and that all these fish, if brought into the St. Petersburg market, 

 would not fetch enough money to pay the expenses of the Nikolsk estab- 

 lishment for one year. 



If we were to judge fish-culture from this establishment, we would 

 most assuredly do better to shiver our hatching-pots into atoms, to use 

 the wood-work of our hatching-houses as fuel in our bake-ovens, and 

 simply leave fish and fish culture alone. The professor, however, does 

 not base his unfavorable opinion of fish-culture only on the above-men- 

 tioned Russian failures, but also on experience gathered by him in coun- 

 tries having a far higher civilization than Russia; and it must be granted 

 that he has drawn bis information from numerous sources, and that he 

 has critically sifted all the material he could lay hold of and used it in 

 such a manner as to serve his preconceived opinion. He refers to sev- 

 eral articles in our journal, according to which — in spite of all reports 

 to the contrary showing an increase of salmon in consequence of the 

 placing of young fry in open waters — the number of salmon had mate- 

 rially decreased. The professor does not state, however, that in many 

 other articles contained in our journal we have given favorable reports, 

 and that at no time we have denied the vitality and usefulness of fish- 

 culture, if properly managed, whilst he condemns it entirely. In re- 

 viewing the efforts made by various countries, the professor does not 

 arrive at any more favorable result. Among the rest, the efforts made 

 by us in Germany, especially those of the German Fishery Association, 

 appear to him entirely futile; and as to the reports of the German Fish- 

 ery Association, he regards them as rose-colored and unreliable. Truly 

 a harsh and discouraging opinion, if the professor is right. But, fortu- 

 nately, matters are not quite as bad as he makes out. Exaggerated 

 hopes have doubtless often been based on mere accidental occurrences, 

 and people have begun to exult too soon; doubtless, those incalculable 

 figures which nature uses in her arithmetic of the birth and death of 

 aquatic animals have more or less been left out of the account by many 

 of our x>isciculturists ; and life and death in the water has, theoretically, 

 been forgotten ; very probably the outlay of labor and money will, even 

 at the present time, hardly correspond to the results; but all this does 

 not justify us in deprecating the efforts made by our Fishery Associa- 



